One day she and a friend called a number

One day she and a friend called a number on the back cover of the literary journal Quarterly. The phone was answered by the journal’s editor, Gordon Lish, who invited Spiotta and her friend to come work for him in New York. They did, as managing editors. ‘‘Whatever you’re trying to hide is what you need to write from,’’ Spiotta recalls him saying. ‘‘Whatever you’re trying to hide is what makes you an interesting writer.’’ Lish introduced Spiotta to Don DeLillo, who became a mentor and a friend.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/21/magazine/the-quietly-subversive-fictions-of-dana-spiotta.html?_r=0